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Here we see Susie’s desperate need to have her family know she is watching
over them.

6) “At fourteen, my sister sailed away from me into a place I’d never
been. In the walls of my sex there was horror and blood, in the walls
of hers there were windows.” (p. 125)

This is such a poignant comment from Susie, because it reflects one of the
reasons why she can’t let go of Earth: she has died as a life unfulfilled.

7) “How to commit the perfect murder was an old game in heaven. I
always chose the icicle: the weapon melts away.” (p. 125)

This quote shows how Susie is basically a very compassionate girl. She would
choose the icicle, because it wouldn’t hurt anyone. Ironically, it’s the
icicle that Susie uses to frighten Mr. Harvey into falling into the ravine
where he dies.

8) “When the dead are done with the living, the living can go on
to other things,“ Franny said. “What about the dead?“ I asked. “Where
do we go?” (p. 145)

Here we see Franny’s advice to Susie, trying to help her find her Heaven.
But Susie is unsure what to do or where she belongs.

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9) “Murder had a blood red door on the other side of which was everything
unimaginable to everyone.” (p. 206)

This quote sheds light on the most difficult part of being the family of a
murdered child: no one wants to cross your door, because your tragedy
is unimaginable.

10) “I had rescued the moment by using my camera and in that way
had found how to stop time and hold it. No one could take that image away
from me because I owned it.” (p. 213)

Here we see how important the photos have become not only to her family, but
to Susie as well.

11) “I watched my beautiful sister running . . . and I knew she was
not running away from me or toward me. Like someone who has survived a
gut-shot, the wound had been closing, closing - braiding into a scar for
eight long years.” (p. 242)

Susie observes how her sister has finally reached a point where her pain will
soon be healed.

12) “Sometimes you cry, Susie, even when someone you love has been
gone a long time.” (p.261)

Susie’s grandfather reveals that even in heaven, there are painful memories.

Susie recites a poem her father always said to her when she was small. It
comforts her now that she knows she will soon be able to let go of Earth.

15) “Last night it had been my father who had finally said it, ‘She’s
never coming home.’ A clear and easy piece of truth that everyone who
had ever known me had accepted. But he needed to say it, and she needed
to hear him say it.” (p. 289)

For eight years, the family has been unable to admit what they have always
known in their hearts: Susie was dead.

16) “These were the lovely bones that had grown around my absence:
the connections - sometimes tenuous, sometimes made at great cost, but
often magnificent - that happened after I was gone. And I began to see
things in a way that let me hold the world without me in it. The events
that my death wrought were merely the bones of a body that would become
whole at some unpredictable time in the future. The price of what I came
to see as this miraculous body had been my life.” (p. 320)

Susie explains how her death impacted the world while she was in it and how
it has impacted the world without her. This is also the basis for the
title of the novel.